Comparisons

"Never compare yourself to someone else...

• you'll always find someone who is better than you, which leaves you discouraged

• you'll always find someone who is not as good as you, which leaves you prideful

• either way, you're dead in the water"

~Rick Warren

These words have stung me quite a few times over the last few days, as I've found myself at the mercy of both of these extremes. My hair, my body type, my house, my car, my husband, my child, my dog, my life...the list goes on and on.

I wonder how Jesus dealt with these things while here on planet Earth. I know that He was faced with these same temptations, as He walked along: prideful, wealthy Pharisees on one side and handicapped, ravaged beggars on the other. I mean, He is fully and completely God, but He was also fully and completely human too - and I have to believe that this temptation to compare visited him more than once while serving the humanity around him.

But even in His temptation, He could not, would not, fail. One could simply say that it was because He was God, and God could not fail. From a different angle, one could also see that because He was God, He would've understood the certain death that awaited Him if He chose to give into the temptations He faced, and therefore He would not fail.

Our God, in the human form of Jesus Christ for a time, knows so perfectly well our human condition. He knows the trials we face. He knows our ungrateful, entitled, prideful flesh patterns better than even we know them ourselves, which is ultimately why He had to come to earth. Without him, we would forever be stuck on a link the chain of life, always with someone in better circumstances than ourselves, always with somebody in worse - and these would be the only things in life to measure our "progress." Thank God he has offered us life outside of that road to death, a life that begins with an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, the One who knows our humanness and loves us more than life...literally!!!